Word for Word/The Romanovs; Banality in the Face of Doom: Notes From the Czar's Last Days

IN writing, ''Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown,'' Shakespeare couldn't have imagined the likes of Nicholas II, Russia's last czar, whose remains will be interred on Friday in St. Petersburg along with those of his family.

Nicholas was considered a lightweight, a weak, unengaged but brutal ruler who preferred family life to affairs of state, even as the 300-year-old Romanov empire was collapsing around him.

His burial, however, is a potent political symbol for post-Communist Russia. Taking place 80 years to the day after the Bolsheviks executed him along with Czarina Alexandra and their son and four daughters, it will implicity censure the Communist era by acknowledging the imperial murders that ushered it in. The sensitivities are such that the ceremony will not be attended by President Boris N. Yeltsin, who ordered the Romanov bone fragments dug up from a forest in the Urals seven years ago.

Russia is commemorating the last Romanovs in other ways too -- notably in an exhibition of imperial artifacts that opens in Wilmington, Del., on Aug. 1, at the start of a three-city American tour. It includes recently disclosed letters and diaries, many never published, covering the family's final months.

Even as their end loomed, they show little awareness in their diaries. ''There is no indication of their lives as political beings,'' said Robert Steven Bianchi, a curator and planner of the tour. ''It is the mundane affairs of a family that is very close.'' Excerpts follow, from translations in the exhibition catalog (Harry N. Abrams, New York, in association with Booth-Clibborn Editions, London). JUDITH H. DOBRZYNSKI

Nicholas was a reluctant czar. On his accession after his father's death, he wrote in 1894 that it was ''the very worst thing has happened to me.'' He frequently submitted to the wishes of Alexandra -- even more out of touch with national life than he was. On Dec. 14, 1916, with the monarchy teetering during World War I, she wrote to Nicholas at his headquarters on the Western front:

Be Peter the Great, be Ivan the Terrible, be Emperor Paul -- and smash the lot of them. Do not laugh. . . . I am desperate to see you like this with these people who are trying to control you. Show them the fist. Prove yourself a sovereign. You are the autocrat and they should not dare forget it.

On Feb. 24, 1917, he wrote to her, ''My mind is at rest here -- no ministers and no tiresome questions.'' But Bolshevik-supported unrest in the capital, St. Petersburg (then Petrograd), was worsening. En route to the city by train on March 2, Nicholas wrote in his diary:

Ruzsky [a senior general] came in the morning and read me his long telephone conversation with Rodzianko [the president of the Duma, or Parliament]. In his words, the situation in Petrograd is such that at present a ministry from the Duma is powerless to do anything, because they are opposed by the social democrat party in the guise of the workers' committee.

My abdication is necessary. Ruzsky communicated his conversation to headquarters and Alekseyev [the supreme commander] to all the commanders-in-chief.

By about 2:30 answers had arrived from all. The crux of the matter is that it is necessary to take this step, for the sake of Russia's salvation and of maintaining calm in the army at the front. I agreed.

The draft manifesto was sent out from headquarters. In the evening Gutchkov and Shulgrin [senior Duma members sent to seek his abdication] arrived from Petrograd, and after talking to them, I handed over the signed and recopied manifesto. I left Pskov [southwest of St. Petersburg, where he actually abdicated] at one o'clock at night, with a heavy heart. All around is betrayal, cowardice and deceit!

With his abdication, power passed to Grand Duke Mikhail Alexandrovich, his brother, who renounced the throne the next day, ending the monarchy. On March 3, Nicholas wrote:

It appears that Misha has abdicated. His manifesto concludes with a call for elections for a constituent assembly within six months. God knows who advised him to sign such a vile document. In Petrograd the disturbances have stopped -- long may it remain that way.

On March 7, 1917, the new provisional Government ordered the arrest of Nicholas II and his wife. The family was held in a house in Yekaterinburg, in the Ural Mountains. Nicholas's diary entries in his final months deal with domestic concerns like illnesses of three Romanov children (Olga, Tatiana and Alexei) and reflect the family's humbled circumstances:

Jan. 2:

German measles has been confirmed [in the girls], but fortunately they both feel all right today. The day was gray, not cold but with a strong wind. We go into the garden but there's no work to do. Today I was bored to tears!

Jan. 3:

Alexei also started German measles, but quite mildly. Olga and Tatiana are feeling better; the latter even got up. It snowed all day. The detachment guards' committee instructed me to remove my epaulettes to avoid being insulted or attacked in the town. It's beyond comprehension!

We are going to have to considerably reduce our expenditures on household supplies and staff, as the department of appanages [supporting the royal family] is being closed down from March 1, added to which we are only allowed to receive 600 rubles a month each from our personal capital. For the last few days we have been busy calculating the minimum that will allow us to make ends meet.

Alexei, 13, the hemophiliac son whose illness preoccupied his parents, also kept a diary. On March 4, 1918, he related how guards interfered with some winter fun:

Spent the whole day like yesterday. In the afternoon I played with Kolia [his nurse] and made a wooden dagger with my knife. Kolia too. Later we attacked each other. In the evening the soldiers destroyed the ice mountain, so we can't slide. We were told so by the commandant.

His father was also angered by the guards' action, for a different reason. He wrote in his diary the next day:

This morning we saw from the window that the little mountain has been destroyed; it appears that the idiotic detachment committee decided to do this in order to stop us climbing up onto it and looking over the fence!

On March 13, the deposed monarch acknowledges small kindnesses:

A similar day with 12 degrees of frost. I finished ''Anna Karenina'' and began reading Lermontov. Sawed a lot of wood with Tatiana.

Over the last few days we have begun to receive butter, coffee, cakes for tea and jams, from various kind people who have heard that our expenditure on food has been reduced. How touching!

But by May 14 the Bolsheviks were tightening restrictions on the family's movements:

Today we were told by Botkin [a doctor] that we are only to be allowed one hour's walk a day; in answer to the question, ''Why?'' the commandant's stand-in replied, ''So that it should be more like a prison regime.'' At least they have brought us a samovar, so we don't have to depend on the guards.

On July 13, three days before the Romanovs' execution, Nicholas's last diary entry betrays little amiss:

Alexei took his first bath since Tobolsk; his knee is getting better, but he cannot straighten it completely. The weather is warm and pleasant. We have absolutely no news from the outside.

July 16, Alexandra's last diary entry:

[Niece] Irena's 23d birthday. Gray morning, later lovely sunshine. Baby has a slight cold. All went out 1/2-hour in the morning. Olga and I arrange our medicines. Tatiana read spiritual readings.

They went out. Tatiana stayed with me and we read: The Book of the prophet Amos and prophet Audios.

Every morning the commandant comes to our rooms: at last after a week brought eggs again for Baby. 8 supper. Suddenly Lenka Sednev [the kitchen boy] was fetched to go and see his uncle and flew off -- wonder whether it's true and we shall see the boy back again! Played bezique [a card game] with Nicky. 10:30 to bed. 15 degrees.

Yakov Yurovsky, the guards' commander, later wrote that he called a firing squad together at about 11 o'clock that night. Guards awoke the family and told them that they were to go to the cellar because of unrest in town. ''The Romanovs did not suspect a thing,'' he wrote. In his written testimony, the commander also wrote: ''It's no easy matter to arrange an execution, contrary to what some people think. After all, this wasn't the front, but a so-called peaceful environment.''